The Dark Underbelly of the 2020 Election

The Houston Courant ^ | 12/9/2020 | X

[The Houston Courant]

In George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, the citizens of Oceania were required to attend an assembly called the ‘Two-Minutes Hate.’ During these sessions, images of a person named Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers were projected on a screen, the very sight of which caused the assembly to unleashed a torrent of rage and disgust at the images, shouting obscenities, shaking fists, threatening vengeance, spitting, etc. A narrator enumerated Goldstein’s crimes as his sheep-like image spoke of state opposition. This explosion of hate and insults continued for the next two minutes, and then the session was ended.

In Orwell’s book, Goldstein had supposedly been a high-ranking member of the Party. The Party’s propaganda line was that he had split with the state and formed an opposition group known as the Brotherhood. It turns out that Goldstein and his followers were no more than a fabrication of the ruling Party, created to give a face to all things the state was fighting against and identified as the cause of the horrible living conditions. Although fictional, Goldstein and the Brotherhood were the embodiment of both the enemies of the state and the cause of virtually every injustice. The book’s ‘two-minute hate’ sessions allowed individuals to direct their disgust towards a fiction and away from the real and actual causes of their suffering.

While the United States is certainly not an image of 1984, the parallels between Orwell’s two-minute hate and today’s political discourse are both striking and frightening. In 2009, legal scholar Cass Sunstein coined the term “the Goldstein Effect” in his book, ‘Worst Case Scenarios’ which he described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the (an) adversary…"

[Truthoverpower]

Hate eventually destroys the haters

[Democrat = party of treason]

“...desperate For a headline of hope in the news...”

From a song.

[marktwain]

The point is the "Goldstein effect" was *not* overwhelmingly effective.

Another is the "Goldstein effect" is only useful if you control an overwhelming amount of the media.

Otherwise, the author recognizes much of what happened.